


To Bring You My Love

by idonthaveyourappetite



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Here there be angst, M/M, miserable Hannibal, miserable Will, theoretical s5 finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 19:47:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8222746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idonthaveyourappetite/pseuds/idonthaveyourappetite
Summary: The outcome for both of them was preordained, set in concrete the minute Hannibal surrendered—for him, again—to Clarice Starling and Jack Crawford in the Alaskan tundra. You promised me, Hannibal. You changed me and you ruined me and now you’re leaving me. It was the final indignity Hannibal left him, the indignity of life. Half-life. Whatever counted for life in this fluorescent hell.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [feyestwords](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feyestwords/gifts).



> A tiny drabble based on a dream I had. Will and Hannibal after their murder husband spree has come to an end.
> 
> A real story is actually in the works and I will actually be writing/publishing explicit things. These are just spur of the moment ficlets.

He thought Jack would have known better. The FBI would no doubt love an interview with him, a tearful deathbed confession or at least a window into his fractured, damaged psyche. He closed his eyes and imagined it; whatever profiler Jack had hitched his star to now—likely the precocious Agent Starling, she who had orchestrated their capture—starting at the beginning, asking purportedly probing questions. Lithuania. Florence. Alaska. Murasake. Mischa. Will. _Will._ He had heard nothing, nothing of his beloved save the snide remarks that a nearly unrecognizable Frederick Chilton occasionally dropped by to dangle in front of him. He figured Jack expected him to ask and it was only the refusal to give the man any further satisfaction that prohibited him from doing so, though so many times he wanted to—would have _begged_ for news of him if it would do any good. Will had changed him more than even he had realized. _Think about me. Don’t worry about me._ Lifetimes ago he had spoken those words through a pane of glass thick as distances. Now he found _himself_ consumed with worry. He had no books. No drawings. No pretense at dignity. He was just another death row inmate, or so they would have him believe. And he found that it hardly mattered, for had he been imprisoned in a palazzo of his own design he still would think only of Will. 

 

Days stretched into years, nights blurred into days. And ache becomes more bearable with time. Or at least so Will Graham had once thought. He had the possibility of parole, Alana had told him. A life sentence didn’t necessarily mean life. His face had remained impassive, even when the tears ran down her face and she beat her hands against the plexiglass until a guard escorted her, sobbing, from the room. A life sentence? He was already dead. He had not flinched when they twisted his arm—still riddled with bullet holes—behind his back. He had not answered a single question posed him by Crawford or Starling or Krendler, that smug bastard, but had watched the fright and scorn and disappointment and curiosity flit across each pair of eyes—brown, blue, grey—seated across the table from him with complete indifference. He had watched his own trial from outside himself, a picture of Hannibal’s mugshot projected large onto a screen for the jury the only thing to hold his gaze.  He hadn’t even reacted when Jack came to tell him the verdict of Hannibal’s capital murder trial. As if there would be any question as to the result. The outcome for both of them was preordained, set in concrete the minute Hannibal surrendered—for him, _again_ —to Clarice Starling and Jack Crawford in the Alaskan tundra. _You promised me, Hannibal. You changed me and you ruined me and now you’re leaving me._ It was the final indignity Hannibal left him, the indignity of life. Half-life. Whatever counted for life in this fluorescent hell. 

 

It was no surprise when he was visited by Agent Krendler one morning—was it morning? It seemed like morning, for Krendler had a smile on his face and a spring in his step, not yet beaten down by the horrors of the day. It was no surprise when the man told him that Hannibal— _Hannibal…_ to his chagrin he still found himself rolling the name around his mouth in the darkness, closing his lips around it and savoring the weight of it on his tongue—had waived all appeals and would be sent to the chair within the month. “It should be quite the spectacle,” Krendler had smirked. “If I sold tickets at the door I’d turn myself quite a profit. Your _boyfriend_ has quite the fan club.”  For the first time since they’d put him in this cell, Will Graham spoke a complete sentence. “I need to see Jack Crawford.”

 

His hands were cuffed behind his back and his legs were shackled with chains, heavier than seemed necessary. He was flanked by two guards, though they kept their distance. Perhaps it was because, at Crawford’s insistence, they had forgone the mask this time. Perhaps he was going to receive last rites. Once the thought would have brought a mirthless smile to his lips. Once he would have savored their fear, savored Jack’s frustration. Instead he thought unbidden of Will’s eyes the last time they had met his, hysterical and full of rage, as he had knelt for a second time with his fingers interlocked behind his head. _No, no, you promised_ —and he had promised, and he had meant it, but there was so much blood. He almost laughed at the idea of blood troubling him. In the end he hadn’t been able to do it, would not watch them kill his beloved Will if there was any way he could stop it. He had nearly wept as the scene unfolded before him—the guns trained on them, an infinity of red lights; Will sobbing and struggling convulsively until the medics injected him with a sedative, his eyes rolling back as they loaded him into the ambulance; the blood in his brown mop of hair; Jack’s satisfied, stony gaze; the heavy scent of iron in the clarity of the twilight air. Will had been mumbling incoherently, drugged and bleeding out on the stretcher, and the last word he heard before the doors flapped shut was his own name, slurred and pleading. _Hannibal, Hannibal—_

 

_Oh, my darling boy. We will not meet again in this lifetime._

 

The walk down the corridor to the holding room seemed to take an eternity. They stopped him before he reached the entrance and Jack grimly walked inside alone, leaving Hannibal standing in the hallway with his silent companions for _another_ eternity. Eternity now was all he knew. But that was nothing compared to the moment the doors swung open. 

 

_Will._

 

He was standing between two government agents and he nodded, his eyes downcast, as Crawford spoke into his ear. He was a shadow of a shadow, a candle compared to the inferno that he had been, but even in his misery and frailty he took Hannibal’s breath away. He had forgotten what it was like to have a heart, had locked his away once more and with complete finality when he and Will were taken, but all of it came crashing down on him all at once and with the force of a tsunami when Will raised those sad blue eyes to his. The name slipped from his mouth unbidden. “Will…”

 

Will had planned on being strong, had every intention of showing them no emotion and no need and no tears, but the vulnerability on Hannibal’s face split him open more than any knife. Everything fell away and the world flowed between them. As if from far away, the realization came to Will that, just as he had on the cliffside, Hannibal had stopped breathing. He moved towards him instinctively, clutching at the grey of his prison jumpsuit for purchase, and tucked his head under Hannibal’s chin. He was home. Home, but a dreadful mockery of home, a crude retelling of what was taken from him and a taste of what would never be again. He raised his head, staving off his misery with a wry smile. “They think I’m a hybristophile.” That drew a soft chuckle, Hannibal’s dark eyes roaming over his lips and the column of his throat. “Ah, Will. They could not in a million years hope to understand you.” 

 

Jack cleared his throat, interrupting, and Hannibal smiled at him in cool anger. “You made a deal with the Devil, my love?” Will nodded abruptly, as if shaking away the other men’s eyes in irritation. “I offered my services, such as they are. A case they can’t crack.” When Hannibal began to protest, Will cut him off. “I would have done _anything_.” Overcome with love and desire, his pulse reawakened, Hannibal inclined his head in silent gratitude. 

 

Fisting his hands in the jumpsuit, Will nuzzled Hannibal’s neck. Seized by need, sudden and reckless, he whispered, “tell me you have a way out of this. Tell me you have a plan.” He could feel rather than hear the sharp inhalation of breath and Hannibal’s chest seizing up at the words. “No plan, my love. I’m afraid the die is cast.” His voice was soft and very sad, but worse than that was the resignation. Rage, reckless and electric, spiked through his veins. _It’s easy enough for you to accept. You’re dying. You’re leaving me here._ His fists beat against Hannibal’s chest of their own accord and he sobbed in frustration and pain. 

 

“No no no no no—you can’t say that—you can’t do this to me. This is your fault, you _put_ me here.” When Hannibal’s only response was a sad little sigh, he sobbed harder. “You promised you’d never leave me, you promised they’d never take us—don’t say there’s nothing, don’t say that, _please_ don’t say that—” 

 

The utter desperation in Will’s voice was devastating. Were he whole, and the song of bloodlust still in his veins, his wrath and grief would have leveled civilizations. Instead, impotent and nullified, unable even to wrap his arms around his sobbing lover, Hannibal was reduced to begging, his voice barely more than a murmur. “Will. Don’t cry. Don’t give them this. Please. I cannot bear for them to see you this way.” _I cannot bear to see you in this much pain. Please, beloved. Please don’t cry._ Will had begged him like this only once before, and then Hannibal had been able to help him. Now he knew pain truly, pain that brands and gunshots had been unable to teach him, pain even beyond loss and grief. The pain of helplessness swallowed and suffocated him like a black cloud. 

 

Jack motioned with his head, a brusque little nod, and the two agents wrested Will away from him. One in particular, Hannibal noted, was rougher than necessary and his eyes traveled with license over Will’s body. He could not keep the snarl from his lips. “Jack,” Will sniffed. “I’m not done.” The other man—Agent Krendler, the heir apparent to the BAU throne, Hannibal surmised—cut across Jack’s response, drowning out his voice. “You’re done when we say you’re done, Mr. Graham.”

 

Will turned from Jack to the other agent, his head snapping to the side and his teeth bared like a wild thing, and Hannibal smiled. _Will._ There he was. Something almost feral in his eyes threw Hannibal back to the night on the bluffs. That was a memory he would cherish until he stopped drawing breath, Will covered in blood with his eyes on fire. 

 

“Take the cuffs off, _Agent Krendler_ , or you get nothing. Let him hold me or I won’t speak another word and you won’t get your promotion. You can put me under the jail or throw me to the wolves in General Population. The cuffs come off or there's no deal.” 

 

Krendler laughed. “Now I’m starting to believe you _are_ crazy, Mr. Graham. I could barely find guards who’d escort him unless he was trussed and tied. You’re lucky you got him without the mask.” Once Hannibal would have passed sentence on Krendler for those words, would have delighted in matching him with a suitable recipe, but now the man was little more than an annoyance, a fly he’d have brushed away if he had use of his hands. He wanted nothing but to savor Will’s soft skin beneath his fingertips, to clutch him against his chest until Will’s breathing evened as he had so many times. Jack nodded, and Hannibal was sure his tone was meant to be placating. “We can’t take the cuffs off. But we can give you more time.”

 

It was a mark of both of their exhaustion. Will didn’t argue, just wrenched himself free of Krendler’s grasp and buried his face back in the crook of Hannibal’s neck. He sobbed with abandon now, his body shuddering against Hannibal’s, and he cried like that until he could almost feel strong, warm arms encircling him. 

 

It would not do to exit so grand a life, so grand a love, with a funeral march down these grey halls. So instead Hannibal wandered the rooms of his memory palace one last time, locking each door behind him; wandered through the glades and thickets of his own heart, so surrounded by thorns and teeth. The soaring notes of Bach’s Aria de Capo drowned out the metallic clinking of chains and when he reached the foyer of the Capella Palatina, Will was there waiting for him. Whole. Smiling. _Radiant._


End file.
